No Time to Waste: Avoidant Coping Style Scrambles Circadian Rhythms in Breast Cancer Patients, warned the headline of an article in Clinical Psychiatry News. The article went on to claim

Even in the earliest days following a diagnosis of breast cancer, maladaptive coping styles are associated with a disruption in circadian rhythms –which are proven in metastatic disease to be a prognostic indicator of mortality. The surprising finding… holds potentially profound implications for the timing and tailoring of psychosocial interventions in newly diagnosed patients.

The fact that circadian disruption was significant in a subset of patients a mean 19 [sic] days after diagnosis suggests that there may be no time to waste in identifying and treating potentially maladaptive coping responses that could impact not only their adjustment, but also their prognosis.

Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer, enroll yourself immediately in a stress reduction program or support group, if you want to stem the progression of your disease and prolong your life! If you have metastatic disease, maybe you can blame your “maladaptive coping,” your inept handling of the days and weeks immediately after your diagnosis. Such frightening messages to women who are vulnerable because they have just received their diagnosis should require high standards before being released. This article reeks of hype and distortion, starting with its emotional title, No Time to Waste and “Scrambles Circadian Rhythms,” continuing with claims of “profound implications for the timing of psychosocial interventions,” and ending with an exhortation to breast cancer patients that “early breast cancer patients certainly warrant paying closer attention to coping from Day 1.”

The issue is not just skewered science, because the article contains information that is easily misunderstood without a proper context. Breast cancer patients are urged to take get psychosocial intervention under the threat that if they do not, they are missing an opportunity to control the progression of their disease. This is an example of the irresponsible nonsense that I have been complaining in the past two blogs. There is simply no evidence that psychological interventions can slow progression of cancer or extend life. Claims to the contrary serve to burden cancer patients with an unrealistic responsibility for the outcome of their medical condition. Patients who experience progression to a terminal condition are provided with an irrational sense that they are to blame because they did not take the right steps, namely avail themselves of effective psychological interventions. This article implies that breast cancer patients with an unfavorable course have brought it on themselves by getting too stressed out.

It’s not clear whether journalist Betsy Bates Freed, PsyD. actually interviewed the authors of the study on which the story is based. Media coverage often offers direct quotes that appear to have been obtained directly from authors when they actually come from the scientific article. In this particular case, Freed provides a highly speculative direct quote that “circadian cycles regulate tumor growth” as if it came directly from the mouth of the lead author of the study. For the record, there is some evidence of an association between circadian rhythms and progression of metastatic breast cancer, but it is not clear that it is causal or affects”regulation” or in what direction any causal arrows run. Importantly, such findings have not been replicated with early breast cancer patients.

Clinical Psychiatry Newsis not some dubious CAM website, but an Elsevier published monthly newspaper with an advisory editorial board with recognizable scientist and clinician psychiatrists. It has largely free web access because of pharmaceutical company support. One has to question what editorial control over content is exerted before releasing articles like No Time to Waste.(more…)

What a wonderful world it would be if cancer patients could extend their survival time by mobilizing their immune systems by eating the right foods, practicing yoga, and venting their emotions in a support group. The idea that patients can enlist their immune systems to fight the progression of cancer is deeply entrenched in psychosomatic medicine and the imagination of the lay public, and evidence to the contrary has been sometimes bitterly resisted. Of course, cancer patients can use psychological techniques to relieve stress or find emotional relief in support groups and thereby improve the quality of their lives. But the prospect of being able to improve the quality of life pales in comparison to the promise of being able actually to extend life.

The hope that psychosocial intervention extends lives attracts philanthropic contributions to cancer centers and justifies research programs to determine just how psychological processes affect cancer. It is a lot easier to obtain funding if we promise to slow progression of cancer than if we merely claim to offer patients solace and support or to be study ways to reduce stress and improve emotional well-being.

No mechanism by which the mind can alter the course of cancer has been convincingly demonstrated. But the jury was still out until the late 2000s, when well-resourced, carefully designed trials — with survival as the primary endpoint — repeatedly failed to show that psychological interventions were effective. My colleagues and I asked at the 2006 European Health Psychology Conference whether we could “Bury the Idea…” that psychotherapy could extend lives of cancer patients, and this was followed by our systematic review of the available data, “The Conflict Between Hope and Evidence.” Investigators who had undertaken ambitious, well-designed trials to test the efficacy of psychosocial interventions echoed with “Letting Go of Hope” and “Time to Move on.” For some of us, to make claims in earshot of cancer patients that we could extend their lives with psychotherapy was perpetuating a cruel hoax.

My science writing covers diverse topics but increasingly concerns two intertwined themes in cancer and psychology. First, I bring evidence to bear against an exaggerated role for psychological factors in cancer, as well as against claims that the cancer experience is a mental health issue for which many patients require specialty mental health interventions. Second, I explore unnoticed social and organizational influences and publishing practices, which limit evaluation of the best evidence for theories and practices claiming to be evidence based, especially those recommended (and even mandated) by professional organizations and accrediting bodies.

I benefit from a great set of international collaborators, and my colleagues and I have repeatedly debunked claims that psychological interventions increase the survival time of cancer patients by improving their immune systems. Wally Sampson and Bernie Fox provided important inspiration for these efforts. A key source of such claims is the classic Lancet study by David Spiegel, which I will dissect in a later post for ScienceBasedMedicine.org (for now, see our published critique of Spiegel).(more…)